Karrell sat up, fully awake now. “Tanglemane, wait. I will speak to it.” She murmured something in her own language then gave a series of yips, half-barks, and growls. She was answered in kind by the wolf, which padded into the clearing. It proved to be an older animal, with a white muzzle and a lean, hungry-looking face.
“Has the wolf seen any satyrs?” Arvin asked. “Is there a camp nearby?”
“She does not know. She will ask her pack.”
“Are they—” Before Arvin could complete the question, the wolf threw back its head and howled. A second wolf answered it from just inside the forest on the opposite side of the clearing. Then a third answered, from slightly deeper in the forest. Within moments, howls came from the woods on every side, both from close at hand and from a great distance. There must have been a dozen voices or more. The chorus lasted for several moments, rising and falling like a song, then one by one the wolves fell silent.
Arvin glanced at Tanglemane, who stood stiff-legged and trembling. He placed what he hoped was a reassuring hand on the centaur’s flank. “Steady, Tanglemane,” he told the centaur. “You were right; they’re afraid of the fire. They’re not going to come any closer.”
The wolf who had answered Arvin’s sending stared at Karrell and gave a series of yips and barks.
“A satyr camp lies to the east of here,” Karrell translated, her voice tight with excitement. “There is a human in it. A female human.”
“Tymora be praised,” Arvin whispered. Touching the crystal at his throat, he whispered a quick prayer of thanks to the goddess of luck, promising to throw a hefty handful of coins in her cup—coins that would come from the baron’s reward. “Can the wolves lead us there?” he asked Karrell.
She translated his question and received a reply. “They can. But they are hungry; the winter has been hard. They want something in return: meat. They want our “horse.’”
“Our horse?” Arvin echoed.
Tanglemane gave him a wild-eyed look.
“Tell them that’s of the question,” Arvin said, placing a protective arm across Tanglemane’s broad back. He glanced at the rock behind them then spoke in a low voice to Karrell. “Too bad we didn’t have a way to turn the rock back into a giant. We’d have enough meat to feed a dozen packs of wolves.”
“Could you summon another animal for them to eat?” Karrell asked. “An elk, or….”
“Not without knowing how it ‘talks,’” Arvin said. “A wolfs howl is the only animal sound I could imitate reliably. Other than a snake’s hiss, of course.”
Tanglemane’s nostrils flared. His eyes were wide, with white showing around the edges as they darted back and forth, following the shapes that flitted through the darkness. “They’re coming closer,” he whinnied.
Arvin manifested his dagger into his glove. “Then we’ll fight them,” he said.
“Wait,” Karrell said, laying a hand on Arvin’s arm. “Let me try something else.”
Abruptly, she transformed into her serpent form—a sleek reddish-brown snake with a band of gold scales around the tip of its tail. One moment she was standing in the firelight; the next, she was slithering along the ground, circling around the fire. Tanglemane startled, rearing up, and for several moments Arvin frantically tried to calm him, terrified that the centaur would crush Karrell under his hooves. By the time Arvin turned around, Karrell was between them and the wolves, swaying back and forth. She hissed softly, slit eyes turning to stare first at one patch of darkened forest, then another. Arvin found himself swaying slightly as he watched her and felt Tanglemane doing the same.
The first wolf—the one with the white muzzle—padded closer. It stopped several paces from Karrell and stared at her as if mesmerized. Then another wolf walked out of the woods, then two more. Within moments, six shaggy gray beasts were sitting in a circle, surrounding Karrell. All were thinner than they should have been: hungry.
Something flashed out of the darkness—a seventh wolf that hadn’t succumbed to her trance. Releasing the near-panicked Tanglemane, Arvin raised his dagger, but before he could throw it, Karrell turned and confronted that wolf with a spitting hiss. The wolf immediately flattened on the ground, ears back and tail tucked between its legs. Whimpering, it crawled back to the woods. As soon as it reached the safety of the forest, it fled, crashing away through the undergrowth.
Karrell, meanwhile, had resumed her dance. The six remaining wolves continued to sit and stare at her, swaying in time with her motions. She drank in their scent with her flickering tongue then opened her mouth. What emerged wasn’t a hiss, but a series of yips, followed by a long howl.
One by one, the wolves threw back their heads and howled with her.
